I Want One of Those: Self-Powered Remote

With the Self-Powered Remote, couch potatoes will save more than their own energy. They’ll reduce the need for the 3 billion batteries Americans use in their homes each year. The Self-Powered Remote utilizes a magnet traveling though a conductive coil to generate its own electricity. A 30-second shake is all it takes to produce enough voltage to change channels 70 times. Project team Fahmi Enam ’08, Lauren Miller ’09, Nandan Shetty ’07, and Stephanie Trudeau ’09 won the Phillip R. Jackson Prize for outstanding performance in ENGS 21, “Introduction to Engineering,” last spring. Maxime Guimond ’06 was the team’s teaching assistant.